Not a Console Peasant

One of the advantages of being a member of the PC master race is that I'm not beholden to the whims of Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony if I want more performance out of my video game experience. I can upgrade my PC whenever I please.

And "whenever I please" last happened around 2013 or so. It's been a while. Let's change that.

The AMD Radeon RX-7800-XT was released about a year ago, and strikes a decent balance between price and performance. It's also available in a 2-fan formfactor which is shorter than some of the top end graphics cards. This is important for me, as my well traveled Antec Sonata case can only fit about 11 inches of graphics card, and this XFX SWFT 210 trims away all its vowels to conveniently land at about 11 inches.

I also decided to upgrade my RAM as well, partly because having 16G of RAM feels weird when I'm about to install a 16G graphics card.

Do I really need the extra RAM? No. Is it hilariously cheap? Yes.

Anyway, let's crack open the case. As we can see here, there's about 11-1/2 inches of space before we hit the drive bay mounting rails.

And getting an 11 inch card in and out of here is... a task.

I got a lot of miles out of this old card, let me tell you.

But with that cleared out of the way, there's lots of room now to get the new RAM sticks installed.

And then we get to the best part.

Oh yeah, that's worth every penny.

But this is about where I ran into a teensy, tiny little issue. You see, you remember when I said I had 11-1/2 inches of space before hitting the drive bays? Well, that's 11-1/2 inches from the back of the case, not from the IO panel, which is apparently where these cards are measured from. When measuring there, I get 11 inches even, and the old card fits with just a whisker of space to spare.

10-7/8 inches is a bit of a squeeze, but clearance is clearance.

However, remember when I said the new card is about 11 inches long? Well it turns out that it's 11-1/8 inches long, and that 3/4 of a barleycorn difference pushes things from "fits" to "not fits".

So that leaves me with a conundrum. I could buy a new case, but it's such a bother digging all the gubbins out of the old one and bolting things up to the new one, plus it's money I don't really want to spend. And well, no amount of wishful thinking, hare-brained ideas or cockamamie scheming is going to just magically make the card fit.

So that leaves me with only one logical choice: pack the card up and return it for a refund.

The thought of having to send this card back is as frustrating as it is disappointing, but part of being a mature, responsible adult is recognizing when things aren't going to plan and cutting your losses before you get in over your head.

And this is just one of those times when I'm not going to win, I just have to accept that the universe has had the last laugh and not every story has a happy ending.

Ah well, it was a beautiful dream, even if it was never meant to be.

Waterer is Wetter

As you may remember from previous blog entries, I've been in the process of tracking down and silencing some water hammer caused by my sprinkler system. Various attempts so far have yielded limited results, but in previous instalments we'll recall that I did localize the most likely source to being the water filter cartridge in my fridge.

I had repaired the original filter cap, so that it would lock into the housing as it was originally intended to, but upon closer examination...

It seems that this didn't quite go as planned. The cap is installed correctly, as is the filter, but for whatever reason it's about a quarter inch too long to engage with the housing.

It may be that the filter is too long, or it may be that the cap isn't intended to lock into the housing when a filter is installed, and instead is only meant to do so during the initial shipment before a filter is in place.

I'm really not sure what the story here is, but I do know a solution to it.

And that solution is a little folded up wedge of cardboard, shoved in next to the filter. I moved the cap upwards to get a clear photo, the filter itself isn't that far askew.

I also took the opportunity to install a new filter, since the timer in the fridge indicated it had been about a year since the last filter change.

As per usual, I forgot that changing the filter introduces a lot of air into the lines, which gets compressed when you start filling a glass, and then, when the solenoid closes, expands back to its original size.

On the bright side, the floor is clean now.

Water is Wet

So I was watering my garden the other day, and I noticed that I was getting a lot more watered than the plants were. Something was not right with my wand of moistening.

Particularly here, where the handle joins the shaft.

And as it turns out, the issue was pretty easy to track down.

That is one very cracked piece of plastic.

I initially considered ambling on down to Home Despot to drop $15 on a new one, but on a lark I decided to email Melnor's warranty support to see if they might send me a replacement handle for less than $15, so that I could keep the remains of this one out of the landfill.

Their answer?

They just sent a replacement handle for free. Sweet!

It is indeed much less broken than the old one.

And now that it's all back together, I can get back to watering the plants instead of my legs.

The Ivories Will Be Tickled

And the ebonies will be pinched.

It's time for me to pick up a new hobby (or, more accurately, dredge up an old hobby from back when I was a kid), because I clearly don't have too many of those already.

Like most kids my age, I went through a phase where my parents tried to get me to learn to play the piano. This was likely due to some now-discredited educational theories promoted by now-disgraced educational scientists who were probably just trying to peddle a thinly disguised curriculum of white supremacy to grade school children. This happens more often than you would think.

But enough about that, the piano is a lovely instrument, and this is not a piano.

It's not even an electric piano or a keyboard synthesizer, but is in fact simply a midi keyboard with 61 full-size semi-weighted keys. Apparently the exact right number to precisely span the width of my dining room table. The main difference is that this doesn't make any sound on its own, but instead must be connected to some sort of audio-generating device that turns the midi commands into actual sounds, such as a rackmount synthesizer or, more commonly these days, a laptop computer.

It also has a number of knobs, sliders, drum pads and expression rockers, because let's face it, this is basically just a giant fidget cube for ADHD kids who like to make noise.

Of course the best part of getting any new piece of tech is...

Oh yeah, that's the good stuff.

On the other hand, the worst part of getting any new piece of tech is...

Mmm, yeah. That's the world we live in, alright.

Well, let's get that out of the way.

Now modern midi controllers like this usually don't come with a sustain pedal. They're a generic device though, so you can simply pick the model that best suits your preferences and budget and tack it on to your order. I decided to go with this well-reviewed model from M-Audio.

And let me tell you, it wasn't expensive but it feels good.

It's solid and well weighted and doesn't slip around even slightly, and it's so, so much better than the square pedal that came packed in with the Yamaha electric keyboard that our family had way back in the day, which I think is this exact unit that they still try to sell you for $20 today. For comparison, I spent a whole whopping $25 on this M-Audio pedal. Well worth the extra $5.

Well, anyway, I guess there's just one thing left to do.

This is gonna take a while.

The Way They Crumble

I'm only a few batches into my cookie adventure and I'm quite happy with the flavour. However, the texture and appearance has been a bit more of a challenge. The cookies were baking up with some pretty thin, feathery edges and while that added an interesting crunch, I did find that those edges were quite fragile and tended to drop a lot of crumbs.

So this time I tried adjusting how I was mixing the butter and sugar at the beginning, specifically by foregoing the hand whisk and beating the crap out of it with my electric mixer. What resulted was a surprisingly stiff and airy mixture that I was then able to add the egg to before folding in the flour and chocolate chips.

But of course how it looks and behaves during the cooking process isn't important, what's important is how they come out after they're baked.

And I have to say I'm pleased. The crispy feather edge is gone, and despite how tasty and caramelized it was I think I'm happy to see it go. The texture of the cookies has also changed fairly significantly, taking on a more airy texture rather than the more dense, chewy texture it previously had (and don't get me wrong, that was also pleasant in its own way). I also no longer get the somewhat unsightly ripples in the top of the cookie.

They do come out of the oven looking almost alarmingly puffy, which is amusing.

But thankfully they settle back down after cooling for a few minutes.

And of course, they're still as tasty as ever.

Baby Needs A

... new pair of shoes!

A cow-orker just happened to be selling an almost new pair of 2-bolt cycling shoes in euro-size 43, which just happens to be exactly the size and style I wear. And lucky for me he was selling them for half off, and clearly hadn't realized that he included both shoes in the box until well after the transaction had been finalized!

Anyway, this is quite convenient as my main road/gravel shoes have been on their last legs for a while.

I've put quite a few miles on them and, as you may remember from a previous blog post, I already had to repair the heel bolster on one of them when the original plastic crumbled. The bolster on the other was starting to crumble and I wasn't looking forward to doing shoe-surgery again.

But before we start putting miles on the new shoes, we need to deal with that little "2-bolt" qualification I mentioned earlier.

Those two bolts hold the cleat on the bottom of the shoe, and that cleat snaps into the pedal to hold your foot from slipping off and is released with a simple twist of your foot. So, I need those cleats on the new shoes.

I run the cleats all the way forward on my road/gravel shoes. This gives me a little bit less toe-verlap so I don't catch the front tire with the tip of my shoes. It also gives me a slightly taller position on the bike which tends to work out well for me on road-geometry bikes. On my mountain bikes I run the cleats all the way back to give my feet a more centered perch on the pedals and a bit of a lower position on the bike, which I find to be ideal for off-road riding.

Keeping these cleats from coming loose is very important, so using a torque wrench and loctite is good insurance against the bolts unexpectedly backing out. So far I've never had an issue with this, and with any luck (and appropriate precautions) I never will.

And just in case one of these cleats does give me trouble, I do have some back-up sets.

But thanks to the cleats being hardened steel, there's plenty of life left in them yet.

So the only thing left is to retire the old shoes to their final resting place in my shoe-tomb.

It can enjoy its final nap in the cozy company of my first pair of bike shoes.

Beep Beep, Coming Through

My van has a back-up beeper. Well, it used to have a back-up beeper, we'll get to that. Anyway it was the rather familiar type that made a high pitched intermittent tone, to warn any nearby pedestrians that they were about to get run over by someone who can't see them.

It's mounted in the rear of the vehicle, under the cargo area between the spare tire and the rear bumper.

Removing it only involves unscrewing one 10mm nut, cutting one zip-tie, and struggling with separating the electrical connector for a good 7 to 8 minutes or so.

Now, why would I want to remove it? Well, if you'll recall, this should be making a familiar beep-beep noise. Instead, it was sounding more like this.

Which is not exactly what it's supposed to sound like. It was clear that this beeper was not long for this world.

Rather than going with a classic beeper, though, I figured I'd get on the band wagon of the newer white noise beepers, which are designed so that the sound doesn't carry nearly as far, and isn't as intrusive, despite still being plainly audible up close.

Ironically it doesn't sound all that different from the one I just removed.

But the important difference is that this one is supposed to sound like this, and isn't just on its last, pitiful legs about to keel over and die.

Speaking of keeling over and dying, it's time to cut off the life support from the old beeper so I can reuse the connector. The new beeper uses terminal studs rather than integrated wires, so a set of ring terminals gets crimped on.

Then after applying a bit of appropriately coloured heat shrink, they get bolted into place.

And the whole assembly gets installed back under the van.

And assuming I tightened the nut down sufficiently, it hopefully won't just come loose and go tumbling down the road after I hit the first pothole. I guess we'll see.